India vs Sri Lanka 3rd Test Day 5 Highlights – Dec 6, 2017

Ind v SL highlights today – Third test day five from Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi (India) Wednesday 6th December 2017. Today is the final day of the final/third test of the Sri Lanka tour of India and the conditions are looking in favour of India till stumps day four. Sri Lanka is 379 runs behind from the target and they got seven wickets remaining with a full day. other side India have to dismiss remaining seven Sri Lankan wickets today. FDM Karunaratne opener of the Sri Lankan team gone with scoring thirteen runs, S Samarawickrama scored just five, RAS Lakmal (night watchman) gone with duck.

Day five report

If their two most experienced batsmen led Sri Lanka’s first-innings fight, their fifth-day heroes were two newer faces. Dhananjaya de Silva scored his third hundred in only his 11th Test, and Roshen Silva made an unbeaten 74 on debut, their efforts leading Sri Lanka to a fighting draw at the Feroz Shah Kotla. It was a heartening result, given that Sri Lanka came here right after suffering their worst-ever defeat in the second Test in Nagpur. Neither Dhananjaya nor Roshen played that game, and their displays here may have made fans back home wonder why the former isn’t yet a settled member of Sri Lanka’s top order and why it took 103 first-class games for the latter to convince the selectors of his ability. India took only two wickets on the fifth day, of Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal, their two first-innings centurions. They never once picked up two wickets back-to-back: Chandimal and Dhananjaya added 112, Dhananjaya and Roshen 58 before the former retired hurt, and Roshen and Niroshan Dickwella an unbroken 94. It was a reflection of how well Sri Lanka batted, but also of how little help there was for either seam or spin on one of the most benign fifth-day tracks seen in India in recent times.

With five overs left for tea, India were given a small opening when Dhananjaya walked off the field, having struggled through most of the second session with a thigh injury that inhibited his footwork and running between the wickets. They took the second new ball in the last over before tea and began the final session hoping it would give them some much-craved-for bite and bounce. But Roshen, whose nimble feet and unhurried manner was reminiscent of Sri Lanka’s current batting coach Thilan Samaraweera, was just as assured against India’s quicks as he had against their spinners. A Mohammed Shami lifter hit him on the gloves and he inside edged Ishant Sharma into his box, but otherwise, he wasn’t troubled, as he ignored anything wide of off stump and ducked or swayed to avoid the short ones. India brought backspin, and Roshen immediately brought up his fifty, stepping out and driving Ravindra Jadeja to the cover boundary.

India had a greater chance of dismissing the impulsive Niroshan Dickwella at the other end, and the wicketkeeper-batsman, playing all his shots despite the match situation, gave them one clear-cut chance with the final hour looming. Stepping out of his crease to Jadeja, he missed one that hit the rough outside his off stump but refused to turn. The ball beat Wriddhiman Saha too, and thudded into his chest rather than settle in his gloves. Dickwella kept playing his shots, which led to a couple of hairy moments – a missed sweep out of the rough off Jadeja, a top-edged sweep off R Ashwin – but nothing resulting in a chance, and the players eventually shook hands with 35 minutes left of the last hour. Upright and wristy, Dhananjaya looked assured against spin, his game built around the extremes of sitting on the back foot – which was well suited to the slowness of the surface – or dancing down the pitch, and he only rarely took the middle path of stretching forward in defence. Despite the fact that saving the game was Sri Lanka’s only realistic aim, he wasn’t reluctant to play his shots.

He hit 16 boundaries in all. Some were both safe and eye-catching – such as successive pulls off Ishant Sharma in the first session, or a back-foot punch off Ashwin that moved him to 96 – and others risky but well-controlled – such as his sweeps, both square and fine, off the stumps. But even if he did occasionally get himself in trouble – Ashwin put down a stinging return catch when he was on 110 – the bowlers seldom hurried or wrong-footed him. There weren’t too many balls from the spinners that turned and bounced with any real venom. There were perhaps only two in the morning session, both bowled by Jadeja on his 29th birthday, and on both occasions, he overstepped the crease. One transgression went unnoticed, and Mathews departed in the sixth over of the day. Joel Wilson referred the other to the third umpire, who judged what seemed an extremely tight call in the batting team’s favour, and reprieved Chandimal in the fourth over before lunch.

Jadeja set Mathews up beautifully. His four previous balls were flat, quick ones on a perfect length, alternating between a roughly middle-and-leg line and an off-stump line. Mathews defended all four off the front foot. The next one was dangled a little slower and wider. Not reading the change in pace, Mathews went too early into his defensive stride, and ended up reaching for the ball, away from his body, and edged to slip. Chandimal’s lucky escape came off a ripper that spun from leg stump, beat his outside edge, and hit middle stump, having drifted in and opened him up completely. That ball apart, Chandimal looked quietly fluent, just as in the first innings, his control percentage of 90 indicative of both his own rhythm and the lack of devil in the pitch. Eventually, he was dismissed when a spinner beat him in the air. It was a lovely bit of flight from Ashwin in the eighth over after lunch, the ball dipping on Chandimal as he stepped out, stranding him a long way from the pitch of the ball. He reached for it, attempted a desperate leg-side whip, but only succeeded in leaving a big gap for the ball to turn through and peg back off stump. India were right on top, with five wickets down and more than half of the day still left to play, but if there wasn’t too much experience left in Sri Lanka’s line-up, there definitely was plenty of quality.

Day four report

Mohammed Shami and Ravindra Jadeja ripped through Sri Lanka’s top order after India set them 410 to win the Delhi Test or survive the best part of four sessions to save it. Bad light brought the fourth day to an end with a theoretical 13 overs remaining, with Sri Lanka struggling at 31 for 3. Sri Lanka came within six balls of going to stumps just one down. Nigel Llong had a long look at his light meter before motioning Jadeja to bowl, and he duly picked up two wickets in what turned out to be the last over of the day. First, Dimuth Karunaratne stretched forward to defend a top-spinner that dipped on him, and nicked to the keeper, playing for the non-existent turn. Three balls later, the nightwatchman Suranga Lakmal made a mess of his attempt to block a stump-to-stump delivery, cue-ending the ball into the ground and back onto his stumps.

Shami had given India their first breakthrough with an exhibition of searing pace and accuracy. He sent down two bouncers that reared dangerously towards Sadeera Samarawickrama’s head. The batsman evaded the first one, falling onto the floor while swaying out of line, but couldn’t avoid the second, ball kissing his glove and bouncing off his right shoulder to gully. The effort of those back-to-back bouncers in the Delhi smog quickly told on Shami; he vomited and went off the field thereafter. Lakmal had shown similar symptoms while bowling in the morning session when Sri Lanka again came out with a number of their fielders wearing face masks.

There was no such discomfort for India’s batsmen in their second innings; three of them scored half-centuries, with the declaration arriving as soon as Rohit Sharma brought up his in the 10th over after tea. There were two major partnerships in India’s innings. Shikhar Dhawan and Cheteshwar Pujara added 77 for the third wicket at just under four-and-a-half an over, and Virat Kohli and Rohit added 90 for the fifth at just under a run-a-ball. Kohli and Rohit only hit eight fours between them but picked up a steady stream of singles and twos against spread-out fields as Sri Lanka waited for a declaration. Kohli holed out in a bid for quick runs, soon after reaching his fifty and passing 600 runs for the series.

Having secured a 163-run first-innings lead in the sixth over of the morning, India came out with clear intent to score quickly. M Vijay, normally so watchful outside off stump, repeatedly looked to drive the new ball on the up, and, having hit two fours in this manner, nicked Lakmal behind on 9. Instead of Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane walked in at No. 3, having scored 4, 0, 2 and 1 in his four previous innings in the series. Rahane likes the ball coming on to the bat, so perhaps this was an effort to have him face a harder, newer ball than normal. The experiment didn’t come off. He struggled to middle the ball in his 37-ball innings, as a controlling percentage of 64 would suggest, and survived two close lbw shouts before holing out while looking to hit Dilruwan Perera over long-on.

Pujara was the free-scoring batsman in his third-wicket partnership of 77 with Dhawan. He came out full of urgent intent and was typically twinkle-toed against the spinners, stepping out frequently, working the ball into gaps, often called “two” loudly as soon as he had hit the ball. He hit successive fours off Dilruwan early in his innings, an off-drive and a square-cut, and went to lunch batting on 17 off 15 balls. He found the boundary three more times after lunch before he was caught at slip off Dhananjaya de Silva, playing for the turn when the ball went on with the around-the-wicket angle.

As in the second innings in Kolkata, Dhawan took his time initially and switched gears effortlessly to reduce the gap between runs and balls. It took him 63 balls to hit his first four, a late-cut off Dilruwan, but the boundaries flowed thereafter, as he stepped out against the quicks, went over the top against the spinners and, as always, scored heavily square of the wicket on the off side. As in Kolkata, he seemed set for a century when he was dismissed, beaten by Sandakan’s turn when he danced down the pitch and went for a big hit.

In the morning, Dinesh Chandimal HAD extended his score from an overnight 147 to a career-best 164 before becoming the last man out in Sri Lanka’s first innings. He added 30 for the last wicket with Lakshan Sandakan, who ended up unbeaten on 0 off 20 balls. The No. 11 was beaten multiple times by Ishant Sharma and Shami but defended stoutly when the line was on the stumps. Chandimal went for his shots and picked up three fours in the morning, two of them with cuts and uppercuts. That shot, in the end, cost him his wicket, as he sliced Ishant straight to Dhawan at third man.